Our Neighborhood

We believe that the most effective way to confront the disparity in our neighborhood is by cultivating community and a corresponding network of care. Only then will our neighbors and neighborhood truly flourish.

Meet our team

Elizabeth Dahl

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Elizabeth has lived in North Seattle near Aurora Commons for over 13 years. She has Nonprofit Management and Fundraising Management certificates from the University of Washington and has certificates in grant-writing and volunteer management. Elizabeth started with Aurora Commons in 2012 as a volunteer and has been the Executive Director since January 2015.

______________elizabeth@auroracommons.org

Lisa Etter Carlson

DIRECTOR OF HEALTH & WOMEN'S INITIATIVES, CO-FOUNDER

Lisa Etter Carlson is grateful to be able to spend her days in her neighborhood at Aurora Commons and at home with her husband Andy and two kids, Cedar and Kipling. Lisa is Co-founder of Aurora Commons in Seattle, WA. Prior to that, she Co-founded the Green Bean Coffeehouse (a non-profit cafe). Both of these movements were created and are currently curated by a community of folks that, together, long to midwife spaces where precious human beings from all walks of life can live as though we belong to one another. Lisa has been awake and living with intention towards her neighbors who are unhoused, drug dependent, and involved in street based sex work for over 15 years now. She is a Member of the Adult Survivor Collaborative (ASC) and is a proponent of harm reduction, safe consumption facilities, and loving absurdly.

______________lisa@auroracommons.org

Jacqueline Moulton

ART coordinator & shift lead

Jacqueline has her Master’s of Arts in Theology and Culture from the Seattle School of Theology and Psychology. Jacqueline is an artist who works with paint, photography, sculpture, and installation. Jacqueline has published a book of poetry entitled, The Day I Was Too Afraid to Jump off the High Dive and other tales of fear and trepidation. Jacqueline teaches art courses within the Visual Communications Department at Trinity Lutheran college. Currently, Jacqueline is working towards her PhD in Philosophy and the Arts at the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts. Jacqueline's philosophy is simple: none of us are free until each and every one of us are free.

______________jacqueline@auroracommons.org

Marge Long

Director of Community engagement

Marge is a Licensed Practical Nurse with a B.S. in Psychology currently working on her Master’s of Counseling Psychology at The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology. She has spent the majority of her life walking with and advocating for the marginalized and underprivileged in the United States and abroad. She is passionate about living authentically; embracing the journey of becoming, as she allows other’s the freedom to do the same.

______________marge@auroracommons.org

Karen Cirulli

CO-FOUNDER

Karen has lived in the Seattle neighborhood of Greenwood for over ten years. Karen earned her B.A in 2007 and in 2013 completed the Lay Leader Counseling Certificate from the Seattle School of Theology and Psychology. Karen has been a Licensed Massage Therapist since 2005 and specializes in work specific to women who have experience trauma and/or abuse. As well as starting two successful small businesses, Karen served as an Americorps volunteer along Aurora Avenue in in North Seattle for two years where she received training in Asset Based Community Development.

We photographed Ericka when she was a sex worker. This is her life nowIsolde Raftery // KUOWJUN 4, 2018

In 2015, photographer Mike Kane met Ericka, a sex worker on Aurora Avenue North in Seattle. Ericka was selling sex to support her heroin and meth addiction, and she was so weak she believed she could be dead within a year. She was estranged from her three young daughters and spent many nights on the street.

“White male: roughly 70 years old, goes by name Thomas-driving a red 4 door suv picked up woman in Lynnwood but frequents aurora avenue as well. Was calm at first but eventually got angry, was slamming on the breaks and when woman yelled for him to stop- he parked and tried to strangle her and punched her, then raped her.”

This recently updated “Bad Date List” posting and handfuls of condoms in assorted colors greet dozens of women and men as they step into the Aurora Commons, a day shelter near the intersection of Aurora Avenue and North 90th Street.

To share space is to give of something we do not own, are not entitled to and which has been gifted to us. I did not learn this on my own, as on my own I am selfish and entitled, believing I own the space I inhabit. If, like the proverbial lesson in kindergarten, I have learned to share, it is because the people at the Aurora Commons have taught me how.

How a Coffee House Became a Haven on North AuroraElizabeth Sharpe // SEATTLE WEEKLYFebruary 23 2016

Ericka Frodsham scrapes the last of the soup from an enormous stockpot into a yogurt container without a lid. It is after 9 p.m. and Aurora Commons is technically closed. But without a home, Frodsham is loath to leave.

She slides the topless container into a Ziploc bag. Her fingers are darkened, swollen, her nails filthy. Dozens of silver bangles around her wrist don’t so much as tinkle. She dons a man’s thick sweatshirt from the closet of giveaway clothes.